Tunnel Vision

The $75 billion scam hiding in your WhatsApp chats. For months, I kept getting invited to WhatsApp group chats filled with people who claimed to be making tons of money investing in crypto. The groups boasted exclusivity and authority — with names like Anderson Trading Club, VIP Robert Strategy Group, and Jan’s Cryptocurrency Forum — and their members constantly flooded the chat with pictures of lavish lifestyles and talk of huge profits. I tried to figure out who they really were — and the answer showed me just how close we all are to a much darker side of the internet. Hello and welcome! Tunnel Vision is a new independent video news show that dives deep into mysteries from all corners of the internet. With a commitment to transparency, we pull back the curtain on the journalistic process, em

Johnny and I went down a rabbit hole to understand Saudi Arabia’s massive farms. Just south of the Saudi Arabian town of Tubarjal, there’s an expanse of farmland that stretches to the horizon and beyond. It’s a baffling 3,000 square kilometers of lush green fields, densely packed into a grid-like pattern. And it’s right in the middle of one of the biggest deserts in the world. Johnny found this place on Google Earth while preparing for a field shoot in Saudi Arabia, and called me with a question: What are these fields doing in the middle of the desert? And how did this country manage to grow so many crops in such an inhospitable environment? Finding the answer took us on a journey through 40 years of drastic change in the desert kingdom.

A geographer emailed me a question. Could I solve it on the internet? Deep in the southeast corner of Iran, there’s a stretch of desert covered in countless strange markings. They vary slightly in orientation and size, but they’re all roughly the same shape: curved lines, almost like fish scales. The markings surround a remote village nestled between mountains, just over 100 kilometers from the border with Pakistan. And at first glance, I had no idea what they could be. I first heard about this place from a geographer named Dale Lightfoot, who had found them on Google Earth while doing his own research. He didn’t know what they were, and neither did any of the fellow experts he asked. The question sent me down a rabbit hole of social media geolocation, research papers, and Instagram DMs — and the answer I found told a fascinating story of how one community was building toward a better future.

Stop leaving yourself vulnerable to data breaches and brokers. Insecam is a strange corner of the internet. It’s a site that compiles live feeds from IP cameras — internet-connected devices often used for security — that aren’t protected with a password. The site’s creator states that any cameras that invade someone’s private life are removed. But the end result is still an eerie platform for peeking into life in real-time around the world. I set out to try to identify where one of these cameras was streaming from, and help its owner take it offline.

I tried to understand if these images are ruining the internet. Something strange is happening to Facebook. Over the last few years, the algorithmically suggested images on users’ feeds have become more and more bizarre: Elderly people celebrating impossibly ancient birthdays, artists standing next to intricate woodcarving creations, Jesus appearing in front of airplane cabin crews. It’s being called “AI slop” — AI-generated images designed to bait engagement by eliciting strong emotional reactions. I set out to understand why so many people are seeing this stuff on social media, and what it might mean for how we understand the images we see on the internet.